At first I felt him staring at me in the dark and later I saw him in brief flashes, eyeballing me as I would walk along the streets. And then he was everywhere- at the supermarket and the library, always staring at me viciously and seemingly vanishing into thin air whenever I tried approaching him. This most certainly drove me crazy, for I thought I was hallucinating. And just when I thought I couldn’t have it worst, the most bizarre part of the drama unfolded unexpectedly…
I got home that evening to find a huge surprise; somebody uninvited had made dinner for me while I was away. As I stood in the middle of the kitchen letting fear grip my heart, I puzzled over what was happening to me- who was stalking me enough to have access to be apartment; could anything be creepier in the world?! But then discovering the cooked jollof rice on the stove wasn’t the shocker of the night because as I tiptoed upstairs, I found a man on the floor of my bedroom, still. With my hands shaking uncontrollably, I turned on the light and beheld the man who had been stalking me, covered in his own blood and obviously dead! Yes, the fellow who stalked me for weeks was dead on the floor of my bedroom. His head had been smashed with some hard object, braking the skull open and causing some grey [matter mixed with blood] to ooze out…
As I stared at the sight horrified, I could see it wasn’t long before life was snuffed out of the man. The wound still oozed fluid, the blood smelling strongly fresh and nauseating. My mind was confused, thinking several things at the same time but never considering the possibility of the killer still being in the building. And just then my cell phone vibrated in my pocket, startling me as I answered with my shaky voice and listened to a rather cold female voice address me.
“You have three options: either you report the crime to the police, dispose of the body or you disappear tonight. If I were you I ‘d disappear because when you do, the authorities are going to believe you were the victim! That will enable you unravel this entire mystery, with my help of course. You have five minutes to call me back with your decision. Don’t call back if it is a stupid decision!” Click.
I stood in shock, the phone held to my ear as I stared at the dead man on my floor. For the first time since he mysteriously showed up in my life, I could see that he bore an uncanny resemblance to me; almost as though we were twins. Without thinking straight, I immediately redialed the unknown female caller and told her that I was ready to disappear. And two hours later, I was in a bus bound south, heading towards Calabar. According to my unknown guide, the first step to finding out what had happened was to be on the bus heading to the beautiful city; nobody else must know I was on that bus.
The following day it was reported in the dailies that I had been murdered in my apartment- High-profile Government Official Found Murdered in Lagos Home.The news said the police was working hard to find the killer. But of course the mystery was mine to unravel, at least so I had been manipulated into believing…
